Oct. 2018 courtesy rendering, released by St. Paul Parks and Recreation and the St. Paul Planning and Economic Development Department, of the plan for the future Pedro Park, which will occupy 1/4th of a city block off 10th and Robert streets in downtown St. Paul. The $4 million park construction would be funded in part by the sale of the citys adjoining public safety annex building to the Ackerberg Group of Minneapolis for $1.4 million. Capital improvement bonds would raise another $2.23 million, and $200,000 would come from the citys existing parkland dedication fees. Ackerberg has promised to contribute $40,000 annually toward park maintenance at the site. (Courtesy of St. Paul Parks and Recreation)

“Today’s vote, the culmination of extensive community engagement and over a decade of planning, continues St. Paul’s momentum by adding both contemporary office space and new, vibrant public park space downtown,” Carter said in a prepared statement.

NOT EVERYONE PLEASED

The Pedro Park proposal, decades in the making, drew a sizable crowd of opponents to City Hall on Wednesday, as well as impassioned pleas from Noecker, Dave Thune and Marilyn Pitera.

Noecker is the current city council member representing the neighborhood, and Thune is the former one. Pitera is the last of the siblings who ran Pedro’s Luggage, two retail and factory buildings that were torn down six years ago to make room for Pedro Park.

People relax in a flower garden planted at Pedro Park, next to a mural-adorned building that the city owns on 10th Street in downtown St. Paul. (Pioneer Press photo)

The three spoke at length in favor of demolishing the public safety annex building and installing a larger, block-length public park off 10th and Robert streets, which Thune said had been the plan all along. He recalled the day, roughly a decade ago, he received a phone call from one of the Pedro brothers offering to demolish the luggage store and gift the land to the city. In exchange, the city promised to build a block-length or nearly block-length park within five years and name it for the family patriarch, Carl Pedro Sr.

The luggage store buildings came down in 2012, but to date nothing more than gardens have been planted in the quarter-block space where Pedro’s Luggage stood.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Rather than tear down the vacant public safety annex building next door, a proposal brokered about a year ago with the Ackerberg Group preserves the structure, allowing it to be redeveloped for modern offices, which business advocates say downtown is sorely lacking.

“I am a strong proponent of infill development — density and more jobs,” Noecker told the council. “But we are being asked to make this false choice between jobs and parkland. And if we don’t jump at this deal, we’ll never have another chance to build ‘creative-class’ office space downtown? I just don’t buy it.”

Prince noted that the residential population downtown has doubled in the past eight years, and 500 people moved downtown last year alone.

BUILDING OFFERED AN OPPORTUNITY

The 1920s-era public safety annex was not considered an official historic structure, but its age gave it added allure for Ackerberg, City Council Member Chris Tolbert said while speaking in favor of the proposal. Tolbert chairs the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority.

“A building of this type cannot be rebuilt today,” he said. “It is a special building. It will create jobs.”

Chai Lee says he supports Pedro Park plan as it stands now — 1/4th block park, with the public safety annex building sold to the Ackerberg Group for office space. “This is a great opportunity to put this piece of property back on the tax rolls.” pic.twitter.com/BKirkwusrH

Council President Amy Brendmoen noted the Pedro Park plan recently unveiled by St. Paul Parks and Recreation includes shade trees, a children’s play area, a dog park and other amenities badly needed downtown.

“What’s before us today isn’t a giant lawn,” Brendmoen said. “I’ve heard people refer to a ‘postage stamp size park.’ It’s a quarter of a block.”

Frederick Melo was once sued by a reader for $2 million but kept on writing. He came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings a testy East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets with manic intensity at @FrederickMelo.

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